Good Day for a Shootout

This old house has seen some better days.

The front door is riddled with shotgun blasts and the front porch (or is that the roof of the front porch?) has completely collapsed.

Like memories in bloom, the overgrown flowers keep singing their old yellow tune.

Sun Grain

Something about thewear and tear of sun, wind, and time on wood…

I think these boards were cut from Pine, but I really don’t know Oak from Madrone.

Out here in the Eastern Oregon high desert, the wind-born sand and dust really tears up the softer parts of the cut boards. I dig the contrast.

High Desert Vacation Home

I can’t tell if this had a porch or a covered porch exactly, but walking up to it revealed a lot of boards laying about the front. The door had been kicked in and shot numerous times with a shotgun. Whatever happened here, I bet it made for a great plot twist…

The Slowest Robot Invasion

Another angle of the two gas pumps, this time looking north.

Maybe it’s just my over-active imagination- but the moment I saw these two with their hoses laying in the grass like that… I immediately felt like I was on set of some surreal film or animation, in which the pumps were slowly making their way past the gas station and down the road. Very slow, very retro robots…

Unleaded

Only 66 and 1/2 cents per gallon!

I love how in the old days, there were often less printed laws that presumed the customer might be up to no good and more printed laws reminding the customers to ALSO keep an eye on the proprietor!

Right above the GALLONS dial, you can see “Gallon and Sale indications must be at zero when delivery is begun, under penalty of law.”

Hm… Did old America used to have change for fractions of a cent, or what?

Regular

Vintage gas pump- the old “Gilbarco Calco-meter”, staring into the sun under the Orange Crush sign.

Made back in the day when it was impossible to imagine gas prices ever being higher than 99 cents per gallon. I never understood why gas was measured in a tenth of a cent back in the day, but you can see how this one was retired at only $.69 a gallon.

Dang.

Regular or Unleaded

Pretty sure I saw Louis CK hitchhiking across the street from this old gas station. He’s a great comedian, and I wanted to pick him up or at least take his picture- but this was a way cooler photo, right? Seriously, look at that Orange Crush sign! I mean look at that! I think someone threw a rock at it, even.

Secret Chapel

This quaint little church sits just off Highway 97, close enough you can hear the trucks, far enough the gravel crunch under your tires feels like crossing a small border. Easy to miss now that the trees around it have grown in thick, but it’s well cared for, and the nearby town clearly loves it.

The Grass Valley Methodist Church. Small, specific, grounded. Someone sweeps the floor, patches the paint, keeps the graffiti off it.

You’re allowed to just look, listen, and leave.

Sunflowers

From a distance, the many hundreds of windmills throughout the Columbia River Gorge look like quaint sunflowers against the backdrop of grassy hills. Of course once you get near one, the quaintness is quickly replaced with awe for their size. Massive!